


Hard Habit to Break

by Leydhawk



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010), NCIS
Genre: F/M, Longing, M/M, Self-Doubt, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leydhawk/pseuds/Leydhawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic set in the Stranger in Paradise 'verse, between chapter eight and the epilogue. This verse will be expanded into alternate endings in the future, so stay tuned! Again, SONGFIC. If you don't like that style, don't bother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Habit to Break

They'd been fighting all week. Stupid shit. Cath didn't pick up butter when she said she was going to. Steve didn't let her know he wasn't going to make it to dinner with her friends. But fighting, and not making up. He'd been on the couch half the time, and she had been the other half. Whoever got home first got the bed.

So he woke on Sunday morning, in the bed, alone, and he could smell bacon, and hear a Chicago record on the player. Cath was trying to make herself feel better, and the bacon was probably an olive branch. The next song started as he lay there and contemplated his morning wood, wondering if they were at the point where he could go down there and just bend her over the sink and go for it. Make up sex before the making up.

Then the lyrics hit him. _'I guess I thought you'd be here forever, another illusion I chose to create_.' And a memory of Tim McGee slammed into his mind so strongly he gasped. Tim's pale skin, his own tan hands stroking across his chest and flicking lightly at his nipples while that sweet, sweet smile graced his boyish face.

' _Don't know what you got, until it's gone, and I found out a little too late_.'

God, he missed Tim. Cath never pushed, never asked for anything deeper than Steve offered, but it made him feel so hollow sometimes. Made their marriage feel like a blown-out egg shell and that could be crushed in an instant. The intimacy he'd had with Tim had terrified him, caused him to subconsciously push the man away until Tim broke and couldn't take anymore, but now Steve understood that he wanted that intimacy, needed it, _craved_ it. And it was too late.

' _I was acting as it you were lucky to have me, doing you a favor, (I hardly knew you were there), but then you were gone and it all was wrong. Had no idea how much I cared_.'

He'd totally taken Tim for granted. The understanding, loving, caring man who had uprooted his life and moved around the world for him, who had dropped everything for Steve, had given him the most peace and contentment that he'd ever experienced, and he hadn't even understood how precious that was until he felt the lack.

The chorus came, and he wondered about habit versus addiction, versus soulmate or whatever. There had never been a better match for Steve emotionally and physically than Tim. Intellectually he'd been out of his league; Tim had a genius level IQ, and while Steve knew he was smart, he wasn't in that class. But on that elusive, ephemeral level Steve that tried not to think about, spiritual or religious or whatever, Tim had been perfect, too.

' _You found someone else, you had every reason, no I can't blame you for running to him. Two people together, but living alone, I was spreading my love too thin_.'

Together, but alone. That had been exactly what he'd created for Tim, here, and it was no wonder he'd left and gone to Gibbs. The older man would be a rock for Tim, would never sway in his devotion, and he'd lived long enough to know how important it was to show it, too. Steve was learning that- it was being slapped and hammered into him by Catherine. She needed him to show her he loved her. She was sometimes subtle about it, but she even had his team giving him hints. He thought Danny was probably coaching her, because the little barbs she'd toss out there were right out of his playbook. And they stung the way only the intimate knowledge from his best friend could.

' _After all of these years, I'm still trying to shake it. Doin' much better; they say that it just takes time. But deep in the night, it's an endless fight; I can't get you out of my mind._ "

And he could admit to himself that yeah, he thought of Tim at night. A _lot_. Closed his eyes as he made love to Cath, thinking about a more heavily muscled body, about body hair and blunt fingernails… Wishing he had the nerve to ask her to peg him so he could relive being owned, being taken to a level of satisfaction he never got any other way. But he didn't trust her that way. There just wasn't any possibility of him letting himself be that vulnerable with her.

The chorus sounded again, with the added lines.

' _Being without you takes a lot of getting used to. Should learn to live with it, but I don't want to_.'

And he wondered. Was it true? Did he hold so tightly to the memory of Tim because he didn't want to give it up?

Or was it just a hard habit to break?


End file.
